Backside line: For customers that also depend on the traditional ATI R300 graphics processor collection, open supply has come to the rescue as soon as once more. This newest replace was not a straightforward repair to make, the developer says, and customers can have entry to it this yr.

The ATI R300 graphics processor collection was first launched in 2002 with the discharge of the ATI Radeon 9700 Professional. Constructed on the 150nm course of and that includes an AGP interface – later to be supplanted by PCIe – the playing cards aren’t capable of run the most recent video games, however the open-source neighborhood nonetheless helps them permitting them to run on newer Linux distributions.

Particularly, driver updates for ATI’s R300 by way of R500 collection Radeon GPUs shall be out there this quarter in Mesa 24.0 and customers can have entry to the replace by the top of the yr. Open-source developer Pavel Ondracka explains that the Mesa Gallium3D OpenGL driver replace will deal with NIR reducing, which is said to the vertex shaders of the GPUs. “The MR strikes many of the remaining backend reducing into NIR, particularly ftrunc, fcsel – when appropriate – and flrp. The backend reducing paths are eliminated, which is a prerequisite for extra backend cleanups, he says, pointing to a MR he has that is able to eliminate backend DCE for vertex shaders.”

There have been quite a few updates to the driving force through the years by the open supply neighborhood in its help for the pre-R600 collection Radeon {hardware}, with a latest change being its adaptation to the brand new Mesa interfaces such because the transition to NIR intermediate illustration. AMD, for its half, focuses totally on present technology and future {hardware}.

It’s worthwhile to take a more in-depth take a look at the ATI Radeon 9700 Professional as the truth that they’ll nonetheless run a up to date Linux OS is admirable. The GPU had 110 million transistors, a core clock pace of 325MHz, 256MB of reminiscence, and 19.8GB/s of reminiscence bandwidth. It was the quickest GPU on the time of its launch and the primary to totally help DirectX 9.

Right this moment its capabilities are largely restricted to displaying home windows and textual content however due to the open-source neighborhood they’re nonetheless purposeful. It must also be famous that this present replace was not a straightforward repair to make, in line with Ondracka, who says he tried to get it proper 5 instances beforehand however at all times didn’t make it work moderately till now.